Diverging Stories of “Missing Women” in South Asia: Is Son Preference Weakening in Bangladesh?

ABSTRACT

South Asia is a region characterized by a culture of son preference, severe discrimination against daughters, and excess levels of female mortality, leading to what Amartya Sen called the phenomenon of “missing women.” However, the onset of fertility decline across the region has been accompanied by considerable divergence in this phenomenon. In India, improvements in overall life expectancy have closed the gender gap in mortality rates among adults, but persisting gender discrimination among children and increasing resort to female-selective abortion has led to growing imbalance in child sex ratios and sex ratios at birth. In Bangladesh, by contrast, fertility decline has been accompanied by a closing of the gender gap in mortality in all age groups. Using quantitative and qualitative data, this study explores changing attitudes toward sons and daughters in Bangladesh to explain why the phenomenon of “missing women” has played out so differently in these two neighboring countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Intrahousehold inequality
• women and development
• fertility
• gender inequality
• household behavior

JEL Codes:

• J13
• Z13
• D1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) for providing the funding for this research project, and to Navsharan Singh for her support during the process. We also thank Deepita Chatterjee, Mary John, Ashwini Deshpande, Rajni Palriwala, and Ratna Sudarshan for comments on an earlier draft of the paper, as well as the anonymous reviewers for Feminist Economics.

Notes

1 UNDP (2010) suggests SRBs of 108.5 for India, 105.8 for Pakistan, and 103.6 for Bangladesh.

2 For a variety of reasons, including the impact of sex-specific migration patterns, the literature on sex ratios often focuses on younger age groups to ascertain the presence of gender discrimination. CSRs can vary from 0 to 4, 5, or 6 years.

3 A 20 percent difference is considered normal.

4 The survey was carried out as part of a larger program of research on Pathways of Women's Empowerment, a five-year research program (2006–11) funded by the Department for International Development (DFID).

5 Most frequently, microfinance NGOs.

6 All personal information that would allow the identification of any persons described in this contribution has been removed.

7 By contrast, the consequences of intercaste marriage can be severe, particularly among the upper castes: a man who marries outside his caste may face sanctions, but a woman who does so “is considered dead” (Srinivas 1962: 92).